THE FIND­INGS

“There’s plenty of re­search that sug­gests there will be dis­crep­an­cies be­tween how peo­ple de­scribe them­selves to­day ver­sus the per­son they would like to be­come,” says Mat­tingly. “But when peo­ple are mo­ti­vated to ad­dress those dif­fer­ences, they come to know their true selves. If you’re not mind­ful of who you want to be­come, you may end up spin­ning your wheels. Know­ing you have goals, and that you want to reach them, is very mo­ti­vat­ing.”